


Winter of Discontent

by the_alchemist



Category: Henry IV Part 2 - Shakespeare
Genre: 1970s, 1979 UK General election, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Gen, Genderswap, Industrial Relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1970s UK industrial relations AU. Exciting stuff.</p><p>19-year-old Jenny Lancaster has just been appointed Finance Director of her father's company, Albion Automotive. When Tom O'Bray and his cronies at the Car Workers' Union decide to go on strike, it's time for her to prove her mettle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redletters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redletters/gifts).



_We're coming to the moment of decision_ , said the big boardroom television. _As the tumult and the shouting of the last few weeks die away ..._

Jenny turned round to see her father come in, wipe his oily hands on a handkerchief, and sit down behind the big desk.

_... I can well imagine you saying to yourselves, "If only the politicians would be quiet. If only we could sit peacefully for a few minutes and think about our country and its future and the decision you're asking us to make."_

Jenny turned the volume down.

"I think she's going to do it, you know," said Henry Lancaster.

"Me too," said Jenny. She relished the thought. It would soon be the beginning of a new decade: a new start. For the country, and – she hoped – for herself. What was it her mentor had told her? _The eighties are going to be stupendous._

"She went to Somerville too, didn't she?" said Henry.

"Yes, dad." That would have been a good time to ask, but she hesitated just a second too long and the moment passed.

"Where's your brother?"

Jenny paused, and that was enough. Henry rolled his eyes.  "Well, if you see him, tell him we need to talk. George has resigned: we need a new Finance Director."

"I know, dad."

"Have you ever thought of it?" asked Henry. Jenny's heart gave a leap, but then she saw her father nodding at the television. "Going into politics, I mean. I bet _she_ never got the highest marks in her year."

"Actually dad," said Jenny. "That was what I came here to talk to you about." She sat down on the other side of the desk, as though she were at a job interview. Then she took a deep breath. "I know how proud you are of me and everything, and I know it's what mum wanted, but I'm thinking of quitting Oxford."

Henry frowned. "Why?" he asked.

She smiled then. She had been expecting a flurry of 'no' and 'but you can't' and 'you're doing so well' and 'you've only been there a year and two terms' and (most of all) 'after what your brother did', but she should have known her father better. She breathed deeply again. "I think you should make me your Finance Director," she said.

He didn't reply at once. "I'll still need a Finance Director when you've graduated," he said. "And that's if you haven't gone on to better things."

"If I wasn't your daughter ..." said Jenny.

"There's no other nineteen-year-olds in the country I'd even consider. Your brother was 25 before I made him Managing Director, and ... well, you know as well as I do what kind of job he's making of it."

Jenny knew not to respond to the bit about Harry. "But if I was me," she said, "and you knew me as well as you do, and my brain, and what I can do with numbers and with people, but I wasn't your daughter. Then would you consider it?"

Henry paused before speaking. "There's some in Albion Automotive that wouldn't much like being told what to do by a lass of any age, let alone a nineteen-year-old."

That's when Jenny knew she had him. "And since when has Henry Lancaster cared about what the likes of Tom O'Bray and the Reverend Scrope 'wouldn't much like'?"


	2. Chapter 2

The only room where the lights were still on was the little office of the Car Workers' Union. Clouds of cigarette smoke obscured the peeling posters depicting red flags and triumphant workers while Ralph Hastings and Dick Scrope waited for comrade Tom to return.

Waiting was a regular feature of CWU life. "Make sure we ask for a phone of our own when we write down our demands," Ralph said. "There's been too much Union time and too many Union tuppences wasted on going down to the phonebox."

"Foxes have their holes and birds their nests," said Scrope, "but the shop steward of the Leeds branch of the CWU has nowhere to make his phonecalls."

"What you on about?" said Ralph.

"I'm quoting," said Scrope.

"Oh." Ralph took that in. "Marx again, is it?"

"In a way," said Scrope.

The door swung open. Tom O'Bray.

"Well?" said Scrope.

The little Irishman grinned broadly. "The Northumberland plant says they're in," he said. "We're going on strike, lads."

 

Later, in the pub, Tom lit his pipe, and, as Scrope often put it, went off on one.

It wasn't, he said, that they were opposed to progress. Quite the opposite. But the Albion Esperance was iconic, and halting production would be disastrous, for Albion Automotive as well as its workers.

Scrope nodded, took another swig of beer and went back to writing his Sunday sermon.

Yes, it was more expensive to make, but quality came at a price, and quality meant making everything from scratch, here on British soil. He had read the proposal for the new Albion Tiger with an open mind, truly he had, but when he got to the part about buying in components ready-made from Japan, of all places, he had thrown it across the room.

"I remember," said Ralph, whom the flying sheaf of papers had rudely awakened from a lunchtime nap.

They should never have sacked Hotspur. That was the problem. If the Esperance did need updating, Hotspur would have been the man to do it. Harry Lancaster himself headed up the team of designers now, and that was just typical of the bosses, wasn't it? Fuck talent, fuck training, fuck the workers, give your kids the plum jobs, sit back and take it easy.

And even the little lass was in on the gravy train now. Finance Director my arse. It was disgusting, that's what it was.


	3. Chapter 3

Jenny kept her Nissan in the garage, borrowing an Esperance to drive over to the Northumberland plant. There was no doubt at all that they were good looking cars, at least if you discounted Albion's fondness for the colour beige, and ten years ago they had been state of the art. They were reliable too, but God were they slow to respond. She had to grit her teeth every time she moved the steering wheel.

That morning, she automatically got out her grey suit. It had arrived from London the previous week and fitted like a glove. Its crisp, clean lines spoke of competence and professionalism, and in it, she felt she could achieve anything.

It wouldn't do for Mr Percy though.

She had known Mr Percy all her life, and unlike the rest of the Union men, he was overjoyed at her appointment as Finance Director. True, he didn't seem to realise that anything much had changed since she played shops with her toy till sitting on the floor of his office, but for her purposes, that was all to the good.

So she wore a blue dress, with a pink floral brooch on the left lapel, and kept her hair down.

"Jenny!" God, he looked old. His grey hair had turned to white, and his arms shook as he reached out to embrace her.

"Mr Percy! You look well."

"I'd've got cake in if I'd've known you was coming. Come in, come in." He ushered her into his dusty little office, giving her the comfortable chair, while he sat on a little stool.

 

The first hour was all about Mrs Percy's operation and how Mr Parker was doing now he'd retired and did she know that Jane's youngest was getting married in the summer? And how was that no-good brother of hers? And – here his hands shook even more – his boy was doing a bit better now, he thought, and might even come out of hospital this year.

His boy. Jenny was embarrassed to recall she'd had a crush on Hotspur when she was younger. She remembered his high cheekbones, his loud laugh, his glossy dark hair, always unkempt, his quick temper.

"The man who singlehandedly saved the British automobile industry", the trade headline had read, six months after the Esperance was launched. She'd cut out the picture and kept it in her bedside table.

And he _was_ a good designer, she had to admit that. He had all of Harry's talent, and what Harry lacked: the drive to spend twenty hours a day applying it. But Harry had what Hotspur lacked as well, and that was Hotspur's downfall. When Harry was thrown out of Oxford, he shrugged his shoulders and found something else to do. If Albion threw him out, he would doubtless recover just as quickly. "I'll open a pub," he said, the last time Henry threatened it. "Or maybe I'll go to drama school. Or start a llama farm. I'll travel the world and have adventures."

But when Hotspur was sacked it broke him, and by all accounts three years in a mental hospital had just broken him further. She visited him once. He was sitting in the common room in his pyjamas, drawing. _This is what weakness looks like_ , she told herself, and turned away, disgusted.

"Well, anyway," said Mr Percy at last. "Is this a social call or did your dad send you?"

She smiled, masking the flash of anger. "A bit of both," she said. "It's lovely to see you and hear all your news, but  I also came about ... about the strike."

Mr Percy's face hardened, just a little. "I'm sorry, love," he said. "If your dad sent you to ask me to call it off–"

"Not to call it off, no," she said. _And my dad didn't send me anywhere._

"The Esperance ... I'm sure you understand ... my boy."

He was losing it, Jenny saw, so she went on quickly. "It's _about_ Hotspur, actually," she said. "Dad thinks that if the plans for the Tiger go ahead, we might ... well, do you think he might consider coming back to work for us? We need help with ... you know, perfecting the designs and things." _Keep it vague_ , she told herself. _What would a silly little girl like me know about cars anyway? And that way when the promises don't materialise, well, I must have just got muddled or something._

"Really?" He looked into her eyes, searching. She made herself look straight back at him, slightly twisting her eyebrows into an expression of sympathy.

"Really," she said.

"Well, that does put a different light on things." He stood up and went to the window, dusting the windowsill with his hand. "I'd have to speak with the Leeds branch first, of course. Tom, and Father Dick."

"I'm sure they'd understand," said Jenny. "I can let them know for you."

He came over to her then, took her arm and looked at her closely. Then he wandered away again, shaking his head. "Of course," he said quietly. "They'll understand."

 _This is what weakness looks like_ , she told herself. Never let that be you.


	4. Chapter 4

 Jenny slept in her office to avoid the unpleasantness of the picket line. She dressed in the grey suit, and put her hair up, before breakfasting on cornflakes and strong coffee, and going down to the boardroom.

Jenny sat on one side of the table and the three Union men on the other. _No, you stay_ , she'd said to her father. Best keep him out of it.

"Mine's two sugars, love," said Ralph. With Tom or Dick she'd have known they were just doing it to get a rise, but she had a feeling Ralph actually meant it.

However, she rang the bell and Mrs Falstaff came with the trolley. "A black coffee for me," she said.

"We're not going to call off the strike," said Dick, as Mrs F handed him his tea.

What did Albion Automotive want with a plant chaplain anyway, she asked herself. Henry Ford never had plant chaplains. "Don't you have a sermon to write?" she said, "a flock to attend to?"

"Don't you have homework to do?" said Tom.

She ignored him. "Tell me again what the bible has to say about humility," she said. "And rendering unto Caesar."

"He has put down the mighty from the seat, and exalted the humble and meek," said Dick.

"Enough," said Tom, and slammed down a sheaf of papers onto the table. "Here are our demands. Leeds and Northumberland both downed tools this morning."

She did not allow herself to smile. "Really?" she said. "Leeds _and_ Northumberland?" She put on her glasses, and read the executive summary on the top of the papers.

"Well," she said, after a few minutes. "I suppose we might be willing to compromise."

The Union men smiled at one another.

"I tell you what, boys," she said. "How about we give you your telephone, and forget you asked for anything else?"

"I don't think so," said Dick.

"Where's your father?" said Tom. "We didn't come here to play games."

"Nor did I," said Jenny. "I came here to dismiss you."

Tom laughed. "What? All of us? Thirty here and nine hundred over in Northumberland. Look again at the law, girleen. You sack one of us, you sack all of us, and then where will Albion be?"

Then the phone rang. Perfect timing. "Hello?" said Jenny. "Ah, Mr Percy. Thank you for calling. Is all well over there? How is attendance today? Good. Glad to hear it."

She put the phone down, and then allowed herself to smile. "I think there may have been some mistake, boys," she said. "Northumberland have decided not to strike after all."

She took a moment to enjoy their faces. Then, "well," she said. "Albion won't be having any more need of your services. So thank you for everything. I'll call someone to help you clear your lockers out." She stood up.

"Wait," said Tom. "We can negotiate."

Jenny sat down again. "Yes?" she said.

"We'll call off the strike," said Tom.

"That's a start," she said. "What else?"

Dick glared at her. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Your members cease production of the Esperance and start producing the Tiger according to the timetables proposed. This will mean the loss of around 200 jobs, but there will be no industrial action. Redundancy settlements will be as I specify. You will sign a contract agreeing not to take action at all for the next year, and never in relation to the Tiger."

"No," said Tom.

"Fine," said Jenny. "Good luck explaining to the rest of the Leeds members that they've lost their jobs over nothing."

"What did you do?" said Dick. "What did you do to Percy? He would never ..." he trailed off.

"We don't have a choice, do we?" said Tom. Then: "fuck you."

Jenny just smiled, and handed over the contract for them to sign.


	5. Chapter 5

"My God, girl," said Henry Lancaster, reading the contract. "You're a genius."

Harry clapped his sister on the back. "The woman who singlehandedly saved the British automobile industry," he said. (Sometimes, she suspected that Harry had also kept Hotspur's picture in his bedside table, despite their famous rivalry.)

"And finally," said Jenny, "these." She handed over the three letters informing Dick Scrope, Tom O'Bray and Ralph Hastings that their contracts of employment were to be terminated forthwith.

Harry sniggered. "Mrs Falstaff said she thought Dick Scrope sounded like a venereal disease," he said.

Henry looked up at her. "I thought you told them they could keep their jobs?" he said.

"Not in so many words," she said cheerfully.

There was a knock on the door, and Mrs Falstaff came in. "Excuse me," she said. "I thought you might want to know the results are in."

Henry flicked on the television. She wore blue, standing out in a sea of black suits, policemen and photographers alike.

 _Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new administration, and I have accepted .._.

"Champagne, Mrs F," said Harry, but of course she had already got it. She waddled over to her trolley and picked up the bottle and four glasses. (Cheeky, Jenny noted.)

_... And I would just like to remember some words of St. Francis of Assisi which I think are really just particularly apt at the moment. ‘Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth ..._

"To Albion," said Henry Lancaster, as Mrs F put her feet up on the boardroom table.

"To Albion," they all echoed.

_... I just owe almost everything to my own father. I really do. He brought me up to believe all the things that I do believe and they're just the values on which I've fought the Election ..._

"To the future," said Jenny.

_Gentlemen, you're very kind._


End file.
